Avidya
by BobLoblawLawBlog
Summary: When her heart broke, it broke open - Short scenes that fill in the space between the second and third acts of "Endgame." Lots of characters.
1. Chapter 1 - Korra

******Author Note: **The idea for this story emerged from the Book One commentaries, particularly Bryan's statements about Korra's ego-attachment and how it relates to the unlocking of her airbending and the finale. Truthfully, I had always been fine with the way the season ended but have always struggled to explain to people why I thought it was consistent with the larger spiritual themes of both series. The idea of needing to lose "self" through brokenness is deeply resonant in a number of religious traditions, so I thought I would explore that in story form. I blend Buddhist, Hindu, and Christian references because Bryke tends to do the same. Sorry if that offends anyone.

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**Chapter 1 - Korra**

Korra was flying through the air with fire surging from her fists. The heat of the flames matched the heat of her body, throbbing with life and making the sweat on her body turn to steam in the frigid antarctic air. When she touched the platform, triumphant, pulse still pounding in her ears, she felt the life force reach deep into the ground, into the snow, out toward the sea, up to the sun, connecting her to the elements. She was body and she was earth, and she was fire and water all at once. And she vibrated in harmony with the world around her, relishing the lingering fatigue in her muscles, in her lungs, as she breathlessly cheered, "Three elements down, one to go!"

She clung to the remnants of her own ringing voice as it was joined by the metallic thrum of the United Forces ship, refusing to open her eyes in hopes of returning to sleep and to a time before cities and masks and terror. In some ways, the good dreams were better than the nightmares of hands reaching out in the dark, but to come out of a nightmare is to find relief, whereas to wake up now, facing the grey steel wall of her lonely room in the officer's quarters was to feel the dull fog of reality descend like a heavy curtain. It penetrated her body and wrapped itself around heart.

She wondered how long she had slept this time. The clarity of her senses and the agonizing sharpness of her mind suggested that it had been a while, but her body still felt weighted with a languid, persistent exhaustion. It wasn't pain, exactly. In a sense, it was the opposite of pain, just a dull numbness, a lack of sensation, as if she was reaching out to touch the world through a veil. She remembered their last day on Air Temple Island before setting sail for the South Pole. She had reached to the ground and picked up a handful of dirt, and it was just dirt. It no longer pulsed with energy for her. She had lain her whole body down on the ground, her arms spread on either side, but she feel of it no longer radiated through her nerves, joining its life to the flow of chi within her. The hardest moment so far had been the first time she bathed and realized that the water was just temperature, a substance that cleared the grime and tears from the surface of her skin but went no deeper. It was no different to her than the steel wall next to her bed. Lin, she thought for an awful second, must be in agony in this place, surrounded by metal but unable to feel what made it up, unable to perceive the fragments of earth that once pulsed in tandem with her will and connected her to the world. Korra felt her eyes well up as she curled in on herself and tried to go back to sleep.

What she could feel, of course, was air, but she was new at this. And air is a slippery element. It lacked the substance of earth, the reliable ebb and flow of water, the intensity of fire. If she concentrated, she could feel the air moving through her and with her, but when she tried to gather it in her arms, it glided away. Yet that one fragile thread connecting her to a universe outside brute flesh kept her at least somewhat tethered.

Air had been there for her, though not exactly in _her _greatest moment of need. She, after all, had already been destroyed. And when she recalled that moment when _he_ was twisted and breaking in front of her, it was like she had been looking at the whole thing from outside her own body. Her mind and her flesh were briefly sundered as she forgot her own helplessness, her fist blazed forward, and something she couldn't name _opened._

Realizing that there would be no more sleep, Korra sat up, brushing her feet against the anxious polar bear dog sitting vigil beside her bed. Walking across the room, climbing up on a stool, and looking out the high porthole, she saw icebergs. They would get there today.


	2. Chapter 2 - Tenzin

**Chapter 2 – Tenzin**

One of the advantages of taking a ship over a sky bison is that Tenzin could bring practically an entire library with him. Since the moment they had reclaimed Air Temple Island, he had flitted between tending to his reunited family and combing his books for a solution. Mako had told him what little he knew about Amon's technique based on Tarrlok's confession and his own first-hand experience. Tenzin knew practically nothing about bloodbending—his mother had always been reluctant to talk about it. But this new clue—the first since Amon's ability had been revealed—held out some measure of hope. Katara would know what to do.

But as the hours ticked by and the ship drew closer to the South Pole, for pragmatic reasons, Tenzin began asking his books a whole new question: what was an Avatar without all four elements? No one knew the annals of the Avatar better than the Avatar's son, but in thousands of years of recorded history, this had quite simply never come up.

Having stayed up all night, exhaustion was starting to claim him. His back was sore, his eyes watery, and his arm was falling asleep. He adjusted the elbow that was propping up his second child, who had fallen asleep in his lap and used his other to move her head to a spot that would allow his blood to circulate. Never one to lack vitality, tired and somewhat defeated, he was starting to feel old. And he had no real answers.

"What are the Four Truths, son?" his father had quizzed his fourteen year-old self. It was a tactic his old master had used with him to distract him from the discomfort of the tattooing process.

"All life is suffering," said Tenzin.

"Good."

"The source of suffering is desire."

"Correct."

"Freedom from desire is freedom from suffering."

"Excellent."

"Freedom from desire and suffering are achieved through the Path."

"Perfect," the Avatar said encouragingly. "And what is desire?"

"Desire is craving. It is the craving for sensual pleasure, for good feelings, for power and strength; it can be both the craving for being and non-being."

Tenzin sighed and rested his bald head on the back of his chair. He had been thinking about his father a lot lately. The reason why was probably obvious. Even in his forties, Aang had seemed impossibly old and to his son. Older than the earth, and wiser than a lion turtle. Tenzin missed him.

Looking down at the child in his arms, the exhausted airbender remembered a time when he had been even younger and had asked his father to explain the meaning of attachment.

"Dad, the Air Nomads say that in order to achieve enlightenment, people have to give up attachments to worldly things? Does that mean people too?"

The older airbender gave him a wistful smile, "It does, Ten."

"But why would I give up my attachment to you? Or to Mom? Or Kya or Bumi? You're my family, and we're supposed to love and take care of each other. Right?"

"That's true too. But attachment and the kind of love are two completely different things. It took me a long time to understand that."

Tenzin quirked his eyebrow and scratched his knee.

"Attachment and desire are pretty much the same thing, right?" said Aang. Tenzin nodded tentatively.

"When we are attached to people we desire them the same way we desire for the essentials of existence, the way Appa wants hay after a really long trip. To be attached to someone in that way is to use them to fill a need."

"Okay…" said Tenzin uncertainly. "But I need you. You and Mom take care of us."

"We do, but that's because you're kids. Kids depend on their parents for their basic needs. Adult love is very different, although even some grown-ups never really learn that."

Tenzin was still confused.

"Ok, son, for example, the love I have for you. I love you and your mom and your brother and sister more than anything in the world, but sometimes loving someone means giving up what you want for them or what you want them to do for you. Think about it this way: your brother wants to train to join the United Forces."

The boy frowned. This was a sore spot.

His father caught on. "Now, I know you don't want him to leave. And trust me, I don't want him to leave either."

"So why are you letting him?"

"Because sometimes loving somebody means letting them do things you don't like, things that are good for them even though they might not feel so good to you. Your brother is facing a really wonderful opportunity. This is the path he wants to take. And in doing so, in doing what he's meant to do, he will bring more joy to all of us. But of course we are going to miss him."

A heavy sigh erupted from the young boy's mouth, stirring up a breeze between the two of them.

"Remember what you're learning in your studies, kiddo. Everything is connected: you, the trees, those lemurs over there, this rock, me, and yes, your brother. Suffering comes from the belief that we are all separate, that everything is win or lose, that we have to fight to make sure we get what we want and someone else doesn't. If we do our duty toward one another, we all prosper in the end."

A little irked that his father had brought up the subject of his brother's desertion, the subject of many screaming fights over the past few days, Tenzin decided to push some buttons himself. "Is that why you had to give up your attachment to Mom that one time?"

Aang was ever so slightly phased. He kept very few secrets from any his kids, and even fewer from Tenzin, who, as the willing carrier of the Air Nomad legacy, had begun probing his father's history from a very young age. "Yes, that's why. I never stopped loving your mother, not for a second. But in order to save us all, I had to put aside my need for her in the moment. I failed at that once, and it nearly cost us everything."

"Did you reach 'enlightenment' when you did that?"

Aang laughed, "No, it doesn't quite work like that."

"Did you ever know anyone who was enlightened?"

"I knew two people," he said, smelling the ghost of fruit pies and a hint of onion and banana juice.

"And they didn't teach you how?"

This kid was too clever by half. "They did their best. The truth is, Ten, Avatars don't really get to experience enlightenment. To do so is to detach completely from the world, but the Avatar has a responsibility to the world and has to live in it, as messed up as it is sometimes. What I had to do is learn how to open myself up completely to the Avatar Spirit in order to serve other people."

"Do you think I'll ever get there?"

Aang reached out and roughly caressed his son's shaved head, "The people you teach and the people they teach and the generations of Air Acolytes that come after us might. But you have a duty to the world too, kiddo."

Tenzin remembered feeling a little crestfallen when his father had told him that, but looking down at the sleeping form in his arms, he couldn't imagine treading the wandering, celibate path that some of his more spiritually ambitious pupils had undertaken, visiting the old Air Temples and living outside society.

Over fifty years old, he admitted that he still struggled—had always struggled—with attachment, especially where his father was concerned. His father had been everything to him, but he was part of a cycle. And his body was just a body. And when Tenzin had been still too young to lose a parent, he had left, like but not just like his brother.

And Tenzin had cursed the stars.


	3. Chapter 3 - Asami

**Chapter 3 – Asami**

Bolin and Mako were lined up on her left, leaning against the railing, and Jinora, perched between the two brothers was trying to cut the ambient anxiety by telling them all the stories she knew about the Southern Water Tribe. In addition to being where her grandparents had met, this was where Avatar Kuruk had met Ummi, whom he traveled to the Spirit World to avenge. Asami smiled wistfully. She had heard this story before, but the boys next to her were rapt, eager, perhaps, for a distraction.

Raised in a largely secular household, Asami had heard stories about the Avatar and the spirits, but in the vein of pure narrative rather than metaphysics. When she was a small child, her mother had read her this story, but it felt like a tale that had grown with its own telling rather than a thing that had actually happened. Throughout her life, she had always admired skilled benders but sort of took their abilities for granted. The pro-benders in the ring, the nurse who healed her bumps and scrapes, and the faceless hundreds who provided electricity were no more to her than the engineers who designed new products for her father or the people who performed the delicate alchemy of finance. It could all seem like magic if you didn't know better.

When Korra had come to Republic City, she had been a curiosity. And for Asami she had become a friend. But she had never really thought of her as more than a person with freakish talents and a ceremonial place in the City's political structure. Even though she knew about Aang and those who had come before him, the modern world she inhabited had blossomed without an Avatar and never really knew what it was missing.

But when Jinora told these stories, the twinkle of a thousand years in her eyes, they had the weight of history, and Asami wasn't sure what to believe any more. And having lost so much, she wanted to hold onto something, perhaps to the belief that life really was about cycles with some force beyond herself and the broken people around her guarding the balance. As one thing died, something new came to take its place, and as the cycle moved throughout the eons, maybe humans would learn and get better. Maybe they could escape the cycle altogether.

Jinora's voice sounded far away, and Asami was briefly brought back from her thoughts by the sound of heavy footsteps on the other side of the deck. They stopped for a few seconds before moving on, and Asami looked over her shoulder to see Korra disappearing toward the map room, where Tenzin had set up a makeshift office. She didn't say anything to the young people next to her. Korra had grown increasingly distant from her friends the closer they got, and Mako had been forced to widen his elliptical orbit. Asami wasn't sure what the slowing of her footsteps meant, but Tenzin would know better what to say to her. So, she didn't disturb Jinora's story and alert Mako to the fact that Korra was awake, but not for her own sake. For Korra's. And the boys'. Ok, a little for her own sake.

It didn't work.

"Asami, was that Korra?" The voice was Bolin's. But Mako sprang to attention like a guard who had just been caught sleeping through is watch.

"I'm pretty sure it was," she confessed. "I guess she's heading to see Tenzin. We should be there soon."

"Did she look ok?"

"I don't know, Bolin. I just saw her back."

"I don't think she's up for conversation right now, anyway. Let's give her some space."

Bolin's eyes widened as his head swiveled around to his brother.

"Do you have a fever, bro? I thought we were going to have to surgically remove you from the floor outside her room? You're not going to check up on her?"

"That's not what she wants right now."

"How do you know?"

Asami caught Mako's pained look and remembered walking past a cracked door and trying not to eavesdrop.

"Because he's in love with her."

The three next to her turned to look at her as if she had materialized out of thin air.

"Um…what?" squeaked Bolin. Mako's slid down to the deck floor and leaned his head against the rail, looking defeated. Bolin looked from Asami to the top of his brother's head.

"Oh come on, Bolin," she said, "are you really the last person on earth to pick up on this? Jinora, you knew right?"

Jinora nodded seriously, still looking out toward the shore.

"Oh…I knew. I mean deep down I did, but…" the earthbender trailed off. "Have you told her?"

Mako barely moved, but he was clearly shaking his head.

"Are you going to?"

The older brother briefly met Asami's eyes before leaning his head back and closing them. "It's not about me right now."


	4. Chapter 4 - Mako

**Chapter 4 – Mako**

The first time Mako made fire, it terrified him. And then his mother had taken his flame in her own hand and held it there, pulsing like a heartbeat, and he had known that fire was warmth and love and not just this thing that threatened to consume him. His parents had scarcely ever fought, but when they did, he remembered how her eyes could blaze with a terrible beauty. But most of the time, she burned steady and true, like embers in the hearth. She had been a capable bender, he recalled, having taken the usual lessons as a child. But fighting had never been a requirement or even a want for her, and she had used her fire to light their lives and their home and to provide for them with the steady diligence of a working class parent trying to give her children a better life. And Mako had been drawn to her warmth with the desperate, needy love of a sensitive child.

Too many times now, Mako had been the lone witness to tragedy, and each time, his aching need for her had coiled painfully in a place around his navel. But time had taught him to take that burn and channel it toward those nearest to him. In giving his warmth toward a select few people (he could count them on one hand), he sought to make himself whole again.

As he leaned his head back against the rails of the deck, he felt the familiar tension of sleeping sitting up in his neck and shoulders and tried to roll them against the cool steel to break up or numb the knots.

_It should have been me_ was the mantra his brain kept repeating, and not for the first time in his young life.

As a child, when his mother had been sad or angry or tired or despondent, no matter what the cause, he remembered feeling guilty, as if he could hold her emotions in his hands and control them like he was learning to do with fire. If Bolin cried too much or made a mess, he would see the lines of exhaustion forming around her mouth and eyes and try to shush him or cover it all up, protecting her for fear of losing her life-giving warmth.

And when she was cut down in front of him alongside his father, he cursed the fear that kept him hiding in the corner where she had left him and where he was protected by the paralysis that rendered inaudible the searing screams in his throat. Since that moment, he had been seeking self-sacrifice, and it was only Bolin and his tear-stained face that kept him from immolating in his own fierce grief.

_It should have been me._ The feel of the blood-bender's grip had been excruciating, but more painful still was the process of watching his companion's face turn to ash before him. Standing by the busted window, he had cast impotent flames in the direction of their enemy and heard the cries of the witnesses outside. And when the noise was reduced to a buzz in his ears, he had felt her fall, exhausted against his chest, her eyes closed and her skin frighteningly pale. And he had wrapped his arms around her and wished he could give her his fire.

There had been tears. Walking back into the arena hallway, her knees had buckled a little bit, and he let her put her back against the wall and slide down to the floor, where the dam finally broke, and she had wept into her hands. Sitting down in front of her, he had gathered her into his lap, letting her wrap her arms around his neck and sob like a child into his shoulder even as her grip threatened to cut off his air. He would give her his air and let her breathe for the both of them.

He didn't remember how long they had stayed like that, but in time she had grown still while he whispered completely useless words like, "We'll figure it out," words he had spoken before to a sobbing six-year old who had become his entire world and words he had been struggling—imperfectly—to live up to. Untangling her arms, he had wiped her face with his gloved hand and pressed kisses to her forehead and both of her swollen eyes, caresses that barely seemed to register.

"We need to clear out of here," he had said, and she had assented. He would have carried her again, carried her for the rest of their lives, but she insisted on walking, clinging to his hand like a vice to keep herself steady. They had made their way through the silent, deserted hallways and out into the crowd gathered out front and the too-bright son. He'd put an arm protectively around her and was ready to shield her with his body and his fire if anyone tried anything. But the chaos left in Noatak's wake had left more than half the people gazing in silence at the horizon. And those who did mark their passage took a step back. And to his surprise, she had met their stares, filled with pity or fear he couldn't decide. Her face had turned from ash to stone.

Back at the place where they had left their clothes, he had marked her pain and helped her with the byzantine fastenings of the Equalist uniform before turning around and giving her privacy. Dressed, he had gathered her in a hug, allowing his lips to brush her ear before they set out to join the others. She hadn't met his eyes.

The first night on board the ship, he sat outside her door for hours while she talked with Tenzin in private. He had been there beside her for the initial questions and had answered most of them himself, just as he had told the police the details he remembered and filled in his friends and Chief Bei Fong and Tenzin's family on what, exactly, had happened. It wasn't his first time repeating an awful story. He had orbited around her and tried to meet her every need even though the wall of grief never left her gaze. But there were things, of course, that were out of his reach. All he knew about chi was what his childhood instructors had told him, and that was a very long time ago. And he could tell that Korra and Tenzin were turning over questions too sensitive to communicate to anyone else—but he could guess them—about whether or not she could do her job, about what she would be if Katara had no answers. The world he had grown up in was a world without an Avatar, without her, and for him. And though less complicated, made simple by the basic demands of survival, it was a world that frightened him.

He was superfluous to these talks, and so he sat. And he waited. He hadn't meant to drift off to sleep and woke with a jolt when the steel door opened and Tenzin exited to retreat to his office and the books he hoped would yield solutions. And Mako had seen her sitting on her bed, knees drawn up to her chin, framed in shadows and looking scarily small. The old master met his eyes with a long, understanding look before holding the door open for him and nodding him in.

Inside, Mako took the chair across from her that Tenzin had recently occupied and scratched Naga's giant head as she laid it in his lap. Her whine sounded almost human. Korra had met his eyes for the first time in a while, but she was looking more through him than at him, and they sat like that for almost forever.

"How are you?" her voice was hoarse and sounded like it was coming from another room, and he was stunned into an awkward smile as he came back to reality.

"I'm fine. Are you ok?" It was the stupidest possible thing to say.

"How's Bolin and Asami?" she said, ignoring his question.

He let it go. "Bolin's fine. Feeling a little like a hero, you might even say." That got a tiny smile out of her. "And Asami will be ok, I think. The whole thing with her Dad is pretty rough, but she seems steadier than she was before. More resolved."

"Tell them I'm sorry. I just can't…"

"They know," he cut her off. "They get it. We all just miss you...miss the old Korra."

She winced, and he felt his mistake in his gut. This isn't what he had come to say.

"I mean," he corrected, "We miss just being with you. We want to help."

He was saying "we" to keep himself from saying "I." He was fighting the temptation to talk about himself, because if he started he might never stop. He wanted to tell her about his blinding need to lay himself down for her, about his need to draw her close and give her his fire, to lose himself in her and comfort her with his body and his love. He wanted to be unmade by her hands and obliterated by her heat.

There were words forming behind his lips when she lowered her knees, scooted forward, and rested her hand on the one that was idly stroking Naga's head. Her fingers were cool and soft.

"Tell me what everyone's up to," she said. And he did, bringing his other hand over hers. He told her that Bolin had figured out how to entertain the airbender kids by stealing coal from the boiler room and bending raggedy sculptures that left them all laughing and covered in black dust and Pema groaning audibly as she ordered them to the bath. He told her that she and Bumi could go toe to toe in a battle of who could get Tenzin more flustered. And he told her about getting Baby Rohan to sleep when Tenzin had been busy and Pema had desperately needed a nap.

She squeezed his palm before withdrawing her hand. "I need you to take care of them for me, for now," she said. "All of them. Until we fix this whole thing, I just…"

"It's ok," he interrupted. "Of course I will."

Exhaustion was settling over her eyes. He knew she hadn't slept much. "I need some time," she said, and he knew that the unstated subtext to her declaration was "alone," though he would have preferred to stay where he was until the world ended. "I'll let you know…" she trailed off.

"I know," he said. But it's hard to have faith when people have a way of disappearing.

He complied with her wishes, sort of. He left the room and shut the door, but he couldn't quite tear himself away. So he sat back down against the wall and stayed there until Bolin woke him up with a shake and a worried look in his eye and told him to come get something to eat already.

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**A/N: **I've been trying to do this without going crazy with author notes because I want the work to speak for itself and don't want to impose a reading on anyone, but Mako was a tough nut to crack. I'm trying to get at the ways in which his protectiveness shades toward codependence and how that probably has roots in fear of abandonment, but I don't know if the nuances are showing through. Feedback is appreciated.


	5. Chapter 5 - Korra

**Chapter 5 – Korra**

Korra was getting tired of feeling sorry for herself. The pity of others is bad enough, but self-pity settles into your skin like milk that spills into fabric and starts to sour. It's not like she was the only walking wounded on this ship anyway.

On the way to see Tenzin, she saw her friends talking, their backs to her, and while it slowed her down for a second, she decided she just couldn't deal. The anxious pulse of her nerves became more intense the closer they got, and she couldn't handle small talk or Mako's earnest eyes.

Around a corner, she nearly collided with Lin, who looked exactly like Korra felt. They re-composed themselves awkwardly. They hadn't exchanged more than a few words since that day on the pier.

"Sorry," said Korra. "Is Tenzin still…?"

"Buried in his collection of antiques? Yes."

"Ok, I'm on my way to go... How are you, uh, you know…"

Lin's eyes softened a little bit. "I'm coping," she said. "You can't let 'em see the cracks."

Korra bit her bottom lip and looked at her boots.

"Listen," said the older woman. "There's something…I feel like I should probably be the one to tell you this."

Her audience perked up.

"We heard from Republic City a few hours ago. Debris that matches the boat Amon and Tarrlok escaped in was found a mile from Yue Bay, near where some witnesses said they saw an explosion. There were remains of …the investigators on the scene don't believe there were any survivors."

Korra met Lin's eyes.

"You know what this means, right?"

Korra nodded. _Of course she did. _She felt sick. "Thank you for telling me."

"There's still hope. Katara will know what to do," said Lin.

She swallowed hard and nodded. The former Chief of Police placed her hand on the young woman's shoulder. "We won't let him win."

When Korra arrived at Tenzin's "office," she wondered how her normally meticulous master had managed to make such a mess in such a short amount of time. Books and parchment were piled everywhere, and Ikki was curled up in a tiny heap on one of the chairs.

Catching his darkening eyes as she entered the room, she said, "Bei Fong told me already. It's like I manage to lose even when I win."

"Korra…"

"I probably haven't even thought of all the ways this sucks yet. Tarrlok can't testify, which leaves me to explain everything. But who's going to care what a one-quarter Avatar has to say? Because, oh, as it turns out, the two people in the world who might have known what's happened to me and Bei Fong and everyone else who got hurt while I was busy screwing up are at the bottom of an ocean…"

She was losing control of her volume, and Ikki started to wake up. "Who's…what ocean?"

"It's nothing, kiddo. I'm sorry I woke you up," Korra said to the child who was rubbing sleep out of her eyes.

"It's ok." The little girl climbed out of the chair and walked over to the Avatar and her father. Her tiny hand grasped Korra's pant leg and pulled, demanding she come down to her level before she wrapped her skinny arms around the older girl's neck. "I'm glad you're back."

Korra met Tenzin's eyes with a look of confusion as she held Ikki tight. "I don't know what you mean."

"You've been hiding from us."

"No, not hiding from you. I just need to…I've got a problem and I'm trying to work it out."

Ikki let Korra pull herself away as her Father pointed the her in the direction of the door. "Korra and I have some work to do. Your mom has breakfast."

"Ok. Korra, will you go penguin sledding with me while we're in the South Pole?"

"I'd love to."

Before the child could get the door closed, Korra felt tears pricking the corners of her eyes and a painful tightness in her throat. _Really? Again?_ She bit her lip until it bled and she felt Tenzin's hand on her shoulder. "Just…don't," she said.

"Korra, there are people here who love you…"

"I just...I'm not myself right now. I don't feel like me…" Her voice was cracking. "And I've failed all of you…so… hard…"

Tenzin stood there and let her collect herself. They had been doing this dance for three days now. _You didn't fail_, he would always say. But it never helped. He remembered the story of when his father had woken up on just such a ship and had refused to be comforted.

A long silence passed between the two of them, who were used to long silences. "We'll be there very soon now," he said. "And I want to tell you that I haven't uncovered much since we last talked. My mother tried to keep all information about bloodbending as secret as possible, and I'm not sure now that that wasn't a mistake. If anyone can help, it's her, but I feel like I need to prepare you for the worst."

She wiped a tear from her eye roughly before folding her arms. "Just spill it."

"There is no precedent for an Avatar losing her powers permanently. I have to believe that the universe would have provided for such a contingency. If the Spirits provided a way for bending to be removed, they may have provided a way to reverse it. But again, we are in uncharted territory. If all else fails, there is the possibility that a spiritual solution may present itself, but remember that the Avatar Spirit is not invulnerable. It's your connection to all four elements that gives the Avatar Spirit its potency, that allows the Avatar to fulfill their duty. Lacking that…"

"You think the Avatar Spirit will…I don't know die? Or it will leave me? Will Avatars after me be broken too? Will there even…"

"I have no idea. But I think it means that we will have to rethink what the Avatar's role is during your lifetime. You can still help the world, but it's going to look…different. The world went without an Avatar completely for one hundred years…"

"…and as I recall, that worked out just great." Korra ran her hands over her face and raked her fingers through her hair, disturbing her wolftails as she pressed the heels of her palms against her temples.

"I don't think we need to catastrophize just yet. This is hard, I know. But Korra, there's something else, though I know you're not going to like hearing it."

"Oh, you've been sparing my feelings up until now…"

"Korra, I know you want to believe that you have control of this whole situation, that it's all up to you. It's easier to think that what happened with Amon and with Tarrlok is your fault because then you can go back in your head and try to change it. But Korra, if there is one thing I've learned in my life it's that we don't have as much control as we like to think we do. I have to believe that there is something bigger than us, bigger than even you at work in all of this. As my father proved when he defeated the Fire Lord, there are forces out there that we can't even begin to understand. If you let go of the illusion that you, that we, are the extent of everything there is, if you just give up your control, then maybe…"

As he trailed off, her saw her fighting with herself again as her lips started quivering. "Maybe," she whispered. "Tenzin, I don't know…"

"I know," he said and gathered her into his robes. "But Avatar Korra, I have faith in you."


	6. Chapter 6 - Katara

_"We have often shown the healing side of the waterbending arts, where a practitioner helps the chi to flow more vigorously through the meridians in the body. Bending occurs when a person has the ability to extend the influence of one's chi past the limits of one's physical body and into a particular element. Amon used bloodbending, the act of bending the fluid inside one's body, to break these meridians in key places, severely disturbing or blocking the chi's flow and impairing one's ability to bend."_

_~Bryan Konietzko, AvatarSpirit Interview_

* * *

**Chapter 6 – Katara**

Long before she existed, but not so very long ago, the Northern Water Tribe practiced the custom of sequestering widows past the age of childbearing in a home together. Officially, it provided for their care, but it was also rooted in the unspoken belief that a woman whose husband had died was dead herself. So the women huddled together in their place on the edge of society and combed each other's silver hair and worked their lonely needles and waited for the hours when the voices of grandchildren would pierce the terrible silence and seek the healing of cuts and scrapes from weathered hands. There were stories of some childless women who threw themselves into the frozen sea after their husband's biers rather than face the Women's House.

Katara had chosen her own kind of exile, though it was an exile born of service and faith and love rather than the quest for extinction. She was determined to draw her last breaths in the place where she drew her first, but until then she would tend to the life that had expired in her arms and been reborn with a new face not far from the village where she became an adult before her time.

Katara had lived many lives, each begun the moment she lost someone. And as the years sped on, she was reborn again and again, sadder but purer and more alive than a hot spring on the unsullied tundra. Her childhood died when she turned her back on the igloo door that framed her kneeling mother and a man in dark armor. And she was reborn as a thing harder than ice and warmer than the sun, and she would pull a god in child form from the frozen sea and help him heal the world.

She had lost so many, and she continued to live with the words of Master Pakku in her ears, "The only constant is change," ironic for a man who had once clung so tightly to the ancient ways. After the birth of their first child, Katara and Aang had made another daughter, but she had been born too early. For two weeks, Katara had been as dead. She stayed in her room and refused to be comforted, cursing the hands that had brought a boy back to life but could not force those tiny, unformed lungs to move the air. But then the small, warm body of Kya had nestled in her unkempt hair, and Katara had inhaled her youth and willed herself back into existence. There was a word she had learned, long ago: _samsara._

The old master stood next to Korra's parents, who held each other while they watched the ship come in. Three days ago, she had taken them into a room by themselves and told them, "Something has happened." They were relieved to know that she was alive, of course, without external wounds. But the full weight of the truth had taken hours to sink in, and Tonraq had wept quietly with both women as they held hands and said silent prayers. They had given up the chance to raise their child themselves for…what exactly? To deliver her to this? To offer her up as a sacrifice for the sins of the world? Their daughter, they had been told by the White Lotus, was wrapped up in a cycle that was bigger than them, bigger than their family, and so they had surrendered her and now would receive her back unmade by the world she was born to serve.

Katara reached out for Senna's hand and squeezed the younger woman's fingers with her still steady grip. The ship had docked, and she saw her son's bright robes first, standing out against the grey steel of the gangway. And next to him walked Korra, and her first and oldest friend felt her breath catch as the little procession approached and she saw how much older the girl looked, small lines forming around her lips.

Several yards behind them, she saw two boys whose faces she recognized from the newspaper clippings Korra had sent, and with them was a tall, slender girl in an expensive looking coat. And her mind drifted back to her brother and a little blind girl and a boy with a scar. Her greatest wish for Korra had been friends. But they hung back as the Avatar fell into her parents arms, clenching her eyes against the tears she knew she hated to show them. And then she wrapped herself around Katara, who whispered, "Welcome home, sweet girl." And the now grown woman in her embrace laughed very quietly and hugged her tighter.

Katara kept a small home in the compound where she could be close to Korra while enjoying her privacy. When Korra missed her parents, she would sneak across the snow like a shadow and knock on her door to demand a warm beverage and hours tucked beneath her friend's furs. And then she had found Naga and slept most nights in her own bed. Most nights.

She walked hand in hand up the stairs with her charge with both of their families trailing in their wake. No one wasted much time on pleasantries. There would be moments for introductions and reunions later. Placing a gentle hand on the small of Korra's back, she led her to a room at the back of a house. "Make yourselves at home, everyone," she said. "We will be a while."

The old master's hands held the power of life and death. She had felt lungs expand and the water of life flow beneath her touch, and she had felt the fragility of a man's heart pulsing helplessly within her power during the full moon. Once, only once. And she had hated herself.

The door closed, the two water tribe women sat cross-legged across from one another with their hands in one another's. "Tell me what happened."

And Korra let it pour out. If Katara had one regret at this moment, it was that she had found a way to be absent in the midst of the Yakone incident, pleading duties in another place that were more urgent. Aang and Toph would know what to do. Bloodbending, she had known from the beginning, was a power too great for her—for anyone—to wield. And the temptations of power are endless, even if your heart is pure. But she had always thought she understood the limits, and it had been a spectacular failure of imagination and humility that she didn't foresee that someone would cross thresholds of ability that she had not. But how could she have known _this _was possible: to better understand the limits of bloodbending, you had to bloodbend living subjects.

"Let's get started."

Korra undressed and laid down, her body somewhat more angular than usual, her skin paler. And she let Katara's water-gloved hands run over her. The older woman remembered the feel of healing Aang and then Korra when she would twist or pull or burn something during training. There was nothing like the body of an Avatar, coursing, pulsing with life energy like a sun. But as Katara felt slowly across the girl's spine, through her stomach, down her arms and her legs, over her scalp, she could have sworn she was touching one of her grandchildren. There was power there, to be sure, but it was nothing like the blistering intensity she expected to find. Even before Korra could manifest airbending, Katara could detect four chi paths, one closed. Now she felt one. The others weren't closed, weren't blocked. They were somehow just…gone.

But she kept trying.


	7. Chapter 7 - Bolin

**Chapter 7 – Bolin**

Bolin had slept in alleys under damp newspapers, in train stations with the acrid smell of piss in his nostrils, and in the corners of gang members' apartments with boots occasionally bumping into his jutting ribs. Yet, he thought, this was the loneliest place he'd ever seen. He sat with his brother on the steps outside the strange house in the middle of nowhere. The frozen walls of the compound surrounded them, and beyond that, through the open gate, unbroken white and grey stretched as far as the eye can see. With the clouds overhead, it was impossible to tell where the horizon was, creating the illusion that snow and sky were one.

They huddled together like in the old days. The cold was preferable to the tension inside, at least for now. Naga was nearby, seeking warmth in her own bulk in the snow and looking completely miserable. Pabu was curled up on her head.

"Can you believe she grew up here? I mean, how does _anyone _live in a place like this?"

"People have been living here for thousands of years, Bo. They adapt. And besides, she had people looking out for her. This place is more modern than most of the places we've lived."

"I guess, but it's so…quiet," he said, the wholly novel lack of street noise echoing off hard, man-made surfaces assaulting his ears.

"Yeah," said Mako, and a long moment passed between them.

"Do you remember when Mom showed us a picture of this place when it was being built? It looked a lot bigger."

"Everything looks big when you're five, Bo."

This was the longest conversation they'd had in two days.

"What do you think is going to happen?" he asked.

Mako shrugged. "This stuff is pretty far over my head."

"If she…you know…if this doesn't work, do you think Korra will still come back with us?"

"I don't know."

"But haven't you been, like, talking to her—since it happened, you know."

"We haven't really talked about that stuff. And we actually haven't talked a lot. And when we did, we mostly talked about you guys."

"Yeah, but…don't you…?"

"What exactly am I supposed to say? Hey, Korra, I'm sorry I hid my feelings from you. I'm sorry for all the shit I put you through the last few months. And I'm sorry, I'm sooooo sorry that you were the one to save me instead of the other way around. But now that your life is completely ruined, will you come back to Republic City and please be my girlfriend?"

"I think she'd probably just like to know that we're here for her, you know?"

There were tears forming at the edges of Bolin's eyes, why he didn't quite know. The cold was more intense than anything he had ever felt, and even the relatively moderate wind stung his ears and nose. He curled into himself and moved closer to Mako for warmth. Soon they'd need to go back inside, where the tension in the air was stifling.

"How did I fuck up this badly, Bo?"

Bolin sighed and crossed his arms over his knees, "You really want to know?"

"Would I ask otherwise?"

"You lied, bro. You didn't think you were lying, but you did."

"How did I lie, exactly."

"You let me think it didn't mean anything."

"I was confused. Things were complicated, and I didn't want anyone to get hurt."

"And that's your problem, you know? Asami says…"

"You talked to Asami?"

"_Of course _I talk to Asami. Asami says you think you can keep everyone from getting hurt. And you think you get to decide what we need to be protected from. We can handle you and Korra. What _I_ can't handle is you hiding stuff from me."

Mako nodded and stared into the snow.

After a long silence, he said, "I know that I can't."

Bolin looked at him.

"Of all people…after what happened, I should…"

He put a meaty arm around Mako. "I know you know. But sometimes you need to be reminded. You like to be needed, but sometimes that messes you up."

"Well, sometimes you do need me."

"Sometimes we all do."

"What else did Asami say?"

"I think maybe _I _should protect you from that."

Mako slugged him. Bolin put his head on his older brother's shoulder, and Mako let his own rest on the younger boy's soft hair. It was a posture rendered familiar by years of trying to draw warmth from each other. Bolin wasn't always the best at reading people, but he knew Mako like his own skin, and he knew that his brother's stoicism concealed an open, superating vein of need.

"Did Amon really almost get you?"

"Yeah. It was…really close."

"What did it feel like?"

"Like the worst fucking thing I've ever felt. But not as bad as watching it happen and not being able to move."

"I wish I had been there for you."

"If it had happened…to you…" Mako's voice was cracking, "If I hadn't been able to save you, would you be able to forgive me? Would you still love me?"

Bolin squeezed him tighter. "No matter what happens to me, you will always be my big brother Mako, and I will always love you."

"Do you think…she…"

Their eyes met and Mako fell silent, Bolin's gaze stopping the question on his lips. The wind on the tundra picked up, and it sounded like a scream.


End file.
